le and the Peripatetics, woman was _animal
occasionatum_, as if a sort of monster and accidental production.
Mediaeval councils, charitably asserting her claims to the rank of
humanity, still pronounced her unfit for instruction. In the Hindoo
dramas, she did not even speak the same language with her master, but
used the dialect of slaves. When, in the sixteenth century, Françoise de
Saintonges wished to establish girls' schools in France, she was hooted
in the streets, and her father called together four doctors, learned in
the law, to decide whether she was not possessed by demons, to think of
educating women,--_pour s'assurer qu'instraire des femmes n'était pas un
oeuvre du démon_.

It was the same with political rights. The foundation of the Salic
Law was not any sentimental anxiety to guard female delicacy and
domesticity; it was, as stated by Froissart, a blunt, hearty contempt:
"The kingdom of France being too noble to be ruled by a woman." And
the same principle was reaffirmed for our own institutio